hms iron duke

Tuesday, 19 September 2017

Alphen, Netherlands. 19
September. It was a broadside. In an interview in the The Sunday Times, Admiral (Ret.d) Sir George Zambellas, who until
April 2016 was First Sea Lord or Head of Britain’s Royal Navy, warned that
Britain would have the military capacity of a “Third World nation”, if ministers
do not invest more in the Britain’s armed forces. After years of defence cuts
the Royal Navy he commanded was “hollowed out”, and that it had reached the “…bottom
of the efficiency barrel”. He also said that “someone has to speak out” about
the “capability gaps” in Britain’s defences. Regular readers will know that I
have long been ‘speaking out’ for years about this problem. Indeed, in 2015 I even
wrote a book about it – Little Britain,
which is brilliant and (still) very reasonably-priced. The difference is that
Sir George really is ‘someone’. He is also someone that I have the honour to
call ‘friend’. How has the Royal Navy come
to this sorry point?

Strategy-defying politics
(of course) is a major cause of the Navy’s malaise. Someone from ‘the ministry’,
grandly entitled Mr or Ms “Senior MoD Source”, parried Sir George’s criticisms in
The Sunday Times by suggesting that, “…many
of the challenges the navy faces today can be traced back to the decisions of
the first sea lord. His criticisms come from someone who lives in a glasshouse”.
Nice try, old trick. In fact it is a ‘Mr’,
and ‘he’ does not get off that lightly. You see, like many ministries of
defence in many European countries, the primary mission of the Ministry of
Defence in London is not the sound, strategic defence of the United Kingdom,
but rather the political defence of the Government, or more specifically, the
minister, Michael Fallon.

However, the real problem
is both structural and strategic. London
is trying, and failing, to circle a threat-strategy-capability-money square. To
be fair, at least London is still (sort of) trying to circle that square (and
not the other way around). Most of Britain’s European allies have simply stopped
trying to square defence circles, by simply scrapping the square.

In 2015 the National
Security Strategy (NSS) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) laid
out the threats, risks, and challenges Britain faces. The Government then
decided how much money it could devote to meeting said threats, risks, and
challenges. London then divided said
money into which bits would go to which bits of its broad security and defence
policy, an eclectic mix of ‘instruments’ ranging from diplomacy, intelligence,
aid and development, to (finally) defence.

Unfortunately, NSS 2015 and
SDSR 2015 took place against the backdrop of a government forced to divert huge
amounts of public money to prevent the banks from collapsing in 2009. Indeed, criminal bankers (very few of whom
have actually paid for their alacrity) did more damage to Britain’s defences
than any recent enemy. However, the
problem was further compounded by a government committed to relatively low
levels of taxation at a time of enforced high spending. In other words, the search
for sound money came at the expense of sound defence.

So, how is it that Mr Senior
MoD Source can blame Sir George for a mess that has been years in the making,
and the roots of which go back through years of successive governments only
recognising as much strategic threat as they believed they could politically
(and domestically) afford? Here one comes to the clever politics/dumb strategy
bit. The Service Chiefs, of which until recently
Sir George was one, are responsible for the individual service budgets of the Navy,
Army, and Air Force respectively. This makes said Service Chiefs convenient political
scapegoats for the ambition/threat/spending/capability disconnect that is of the
Government’s own making. In other words,
it is a system primarily designed to protect Minister Fallon from political
criticism. It is also a system that ‘gets away with it’ only so long as there
is no major crisis. Come a major crisis, as looks increasingly likely, and
Britain’s leaders and it defences would soon be found wanting.

The
Sunday Times made a brief comparison between the Royal
Navy of 1982 and that of today. In 1982,
the Navy had 80,000 personnel, in 2017 29,500. Yes, the Royal Navy will soon
have two very large aircraft carriers, far bigger than the two (soon to be
three) it had in 1982. However, the ‘RN’ will only have 6 destroyers to protect
the carriers, compared with 17 in 1982, 13 frigates compared with 38, and 10
nuclear-powered attack submarines (if that!) compared with 26. In other words, and
given that only a part of the Navy can be used at any one time, due to
maintenance, refits et al, a deployed British maritime-amphibious force,
organised around one of the two ‘command’ carriers, would pretty much swallow
up the entire available Royal Navy! Not only that, even the ships so tasked would
lack vital systems, defences, sensors, missiles, and critical enabling support.

The hard reality to which
Sir George alludes is that the Royal Navy of today is simply too small for the
roles and missions which the Government requires it it to perform. This is to exert
some reasonable degree of sea control and sea presence, both as part of a
credible deterrence and defence policy, as well as providing proof positive of
Britain’s continuing power and influence on the world stage.

The Government is at
least aware of this problem and has come up with a new wheeze, what Zambellas
calls, “Fallon’s Frigates”. The Type 31e
(I think the ‘e’ stands for ‘economy-class’) frigate, the construction of which
Minister Fallon announced amidst some fanfare, will be small, cheap, throw-away,
one-hit, all operations short-of-war ships that would not last very long in a
real shooting war. A shooting war which Prime Minister May recently admitted is
now possible.

“You [London] have a choice now”, he said. “You
either put more money in, or you stop doing serious things”. The Government’s
response? “Our budget is growing and, for the first time since the Second World
War, so is our Royal Navy”. First, the British defence budget is NOT growing in
real terms, given the pace of defence cost inflation. Second, whilst there
might be a marginal planned increase in the number of ‘hulls’ available to the Royal
Navy it is ‘planned’ over an absurdly long-time – i.e. over a budget cycle, not
a strategic cycle. Third, unless
real-time investment takes place in the fighting power of those ‘hulls’ the Royal
Navy will continue to be as weak in relative terms to other powers (the real
strategic equation) as at any time since Pepys.

The easy answer is to
simply pin the blame for all of the above on years of savage defence cuts.
However, there is another profound cause that goes to the very heart of the question
that dogs Britain today; does Britain any longer wish to be considered a
serious power, let alone a world power?

Thursday, 14 September 2017

Alphen,
Netherlands. 14 September. You know, I
suppose I should be writing today about European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker’s State of the Onion 2017 address, which he made yesterday
to the European Parliament. So here goes: more EU; more power for the Commission
President; more EU defence (the Juncker Bunker?); much more EU foreign policy; an EU finance ministry
to control Europe’s money; everyone to join the Euro like it or not; less
member-state (except Germany); damn Brexit and sod the Brits (or is that the
other way around?)! Clear? Right then,
that sorted. Won’t happen.

Back to the real
world. NATO is nervous this morning, not to mention my friends in Riga, Tallinn,
Vilnius and Warsaw. You will recall that last month I wrote about Zapad (West) 2017. As I write this massive
Russian nuclear-tipped, 100,000 strong military exercise is getting underway. Zapad 2017 ‘sandwiches’ the
Polish-Lithuanian border between Belarus and the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad. If Moscow so chose it could
very quickly roll this exercise forward into an invasion of the Baltic States. The invasions of Georgia and Ukraine followed
similar such Russian exercises.

In fact, my
focus this morning is rather on the efforts of NATO allies in the Caribbean to
help the poor people therein recover from the mega-hurricane Irma. Now, I am loathe to load more work
onto NATO’s Allied Command Operations and it senior strategic headquarters, the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe or SHAPE. They will have their
collective eyes and ears focused firmly on NATO’s Eastern Flank this morning. But,
hear me out.

On Tuesday I
had a great chat with General Philip Breedlove, until May 2016 NATO’s Supreme
Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR). Phil and I are working closely on a new
paper entitled Future War NATO that
will be published shortly as part of Harmel
2.0, the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative, and for which I am the lead
writer. We discussed the crisis in the Caribbean and the efforts of Britain,
France, the Netherlands, and the UK to support the peoples in the region, some
of whom live in former colonies, actual ‘dependent territories, and in the case
of the French and Dutch islands that are technically part of both countries.

There has
been much criticism of the aid efforts of all the countries involved. In fact, not only was there significant
levels of resource and force already pre-positioned, the sheer scale of the
devastation wreaked by Irma swamped
the efforts of the countries involved. They have spent the last week
reinforcing that effort, as evinced by the Dutch decision yesterday to send the
impressive amphibious assault ship the HNLMS
Karel Doorman. And, to be fair to President Juncker it was good to see him
yesterday offer EU support.

However, much
of the problem has been a lack of co-ordination of the efforts of the four NATO
members engaged therein. SHAPE would be ideally placed to lead such operations.
Indeed, it even has the Comprehensive Crisis and Operations and Management
Centre (CCOMC) embedded at its core which is designed to co-ordinate both military
and civilian efforts.

Phil
Breedlove also made an important political point to me that he has granted permission
for me to share with you. Such a NATO
effort now would also send a strong message of solidarity to those in the Western
Hemisphere bit of NATO’s Euro-Atlantic Area. There is every reason to believe that
Washington and others would be appreciative of such an effort. Make no mistake,
the need for the European bit of the Alliance to send such messages to the
North American bit is, and will become, ever more important. The days of
one-way NATO are over.

SHAPE? Right
now it is busy, but the clue is in its role; it is a strategic
headquarters. Recently, I have been doing a lot of scenario-building and
table-top war-gaming. Every future crisis I create involves NATO facing
multiple, diverse and widely-separated simultaneous crises. In other words,
NATO and SHAPE had better prepare to engage at one and the same time a future,
and quite possibly, even bigger Super-Zapad
and an Irma. It is simply the way of
NATO’s twenty-first century world.

Zapad 2017?
In fact, I don’t think Russia will invade anywhere today. Rather, Moscow is
sending me and you a message. Don’t worry Moscow, I hear you. Message received
and understood: “We need a strong NATO!”Clear?

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

Alphen, Netherlands. 12
September. A United States of Europe never, the States of Europe United,
forever. Regular readers amongst you will have noticed, no doubt with some
relief, that I have steered clear of writing about Brexit of late. There has
been nothing to write about. This blog is devoted to matters strategic and the
froth and nonsense of what both Brussels and London claim passes as Brexit
negotiations are a disgrace to the Latin origins of the word negotiationem; to carry on business. The
EU’s lead negotiators Messrs Barnier and Verhofstadt (Mr Tusk?) are
Euro-federalists who want nothing more than Britain’s capitulation, suggesting a
vengeful Holy Union Empire, rather than the free association of national democracies
in which I still believe. I worked for the EU and I saw at close hand just how
elitist Brussels is, how vengeful it can be towards non-believers, and how
little regard Brussels really has for effective democracy, proper accountability,
and the will of the people. The British side
has ridiculously failed to understand this reality, and that the negotiations
are not about the policy and legal technicalities beloved of Whitehall
Mandarins, but about power. However, what has driven me to pen this blog today is
the sheer bloody, God awful irresponsibility of all those charged with leading
the Brexit process – Leavers, Remainers, Remaoners, Wreckers, and Commissioners
alike.

Let me first deal with
the issue of power, particularly that of Brussels, and to some extent Berlin.
For the EU Brexit is about the power relationship between the European institutions
and the non-German member-states, something which hitherto London has failed to
understand, and which explains why Michel Barnier and a poorly-advised David
Davis seem so often to be speaking different languages, both literally and
figuratively. The British should approach the negotiations as a top-five world
economic and military power, not a pitiful supplicant seeking concessions from
its imperial masters. There is at least some suggestion that London is beginning
to understand this hard reality. Today’s ‘position paper’ from the British on future
UK-EU security and defence co-operation hints at the importance to ‘Europe’ of
Britain’s armed forces, diplomatic machinery, and vital intelligence
capabilities. It is an approach I have long been calling upon Britain to adopt,
and was the centre-piece of a speech I gave at the Royal Society in late 2016. It was also an approach that I was told
repeatedly by Whitehall that London did not want to adopt. Better late than
never, I suppose. The no-brainer admission in the paper that Britain’s security
will be ‘indivisibly linked’ with the rest of Europe will certainly be welcomed
in Paris, which only sees Brexit in terms of power.

Leavers, Remainers,
Remoaners, Wreckers, and Commissioners (et al)

So, what of Leavers, Remainers,
Remoaners, Wreckers, and Commissioners (et al). Frankly, all sides in this
many-sided dispute leave me close to despair. Last night a weak British government
managed to get a relatively comfortable majority for the ‘first reading’ of the
EU (Withdrawal) Bill through the House of Commons. It was just the beginning.
The Bill faces months of blocking and wrecking amendments in the House of Lords,
and the various parliamentary scrutinising committees. Some revisions will be precisely
what a reinvigorated and sovereign Parliament should do. Sadly, a lot of it
will be die-hard Remoaners determined not simply to improve the Bill, but to
destroy it. At the very least the
Government needs to make an important distinction between amending Remainers
and Wreckers.

Leavers:
it is now well-established that the 2016 campaign claim that leaving the EU
would a) see £350m a week repatriated; and b) contribute to funding the
holy National Health Service was a bald-faced lie. There are other lies Leavers are peddling.
The Leave mantra of ‘take back control’ plays to the fear of mass immigration
in parts of Britain, and implies London will soon be able to ‘control’
Britain’s borders. With Brexit Britain
might indeed re-establish responsibility for its borders, but it is unlikely to
control them. If Britain really wanted to control its borders it would mean deporting
a significant number of people with no right to remain, which is implied by a
leaked Home Office (Interior Ministry). That would also mean in turn repealing the Human
Rights Act beloved of human rights lawyers. There is neither the political nor
legal will to do that, nor any apparent willingness in London to invest in the infrastructures and agencies needed to
ensure a properly-controlled border.

Remoaners:
on Saturday a sizeable march of Remoaners took place in Central London which
was addressed, amongst others, by Sir Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats
– the clue is in the name. Sir Vince railed against the incompetence of the
incumbent government (fair point), and talked at some length about what he
feared would be the negative economic impact of Brexit. He also implied the EU
was a functioning Utopia. However, he singularly failed to admit that today’s
EU is not set in stone. He failed to
mention the federalist imperative at the heart of Union (the clue is also in
the name), nor that were Britain to change its mind about Brexit, and reverse
Article 50, it could only do so by accepting the Euro and many other tenets of
the federalist European project – including one day a European Army. He also failed to mention that implicit in
the European project is a ‘finalité’ that Messrs Barnier, Juncker and Verhofstadt
have been working towards all their political lives; the end of the European
nation-state and its replacement by an elitist, Mazarin-esque European super-state.

So, Why (on balance) Did I Back Remain?

Regular readers will also
know that in spite of my profound concerns about democracy, governance, and the
accountability of ever more distant power in the EU, I decided in 2016 that, on
balance, Britain should remain in the EU. There were several reasons. Firstly,
I foresaw this mess and did not believe the mediocre British political and
high-bureaucratic class, which does not believe in Brexit, were up to the challenge
of delivering a political settlement that did not look like the compromise from
hell. Secondly, I feared Brexit would make an
already fragile United Kingdom even more fragile. Thirdly, I feared (and still
do) that London’s self-induced weak negotiating position would reduce a leading
power to the status of de facto EU colony
– forced to abide by rules made by others. That is certainly the Barnier
Gambit. Fourthly, I rejected a central tenet of the Brexit argument – that the
EU was responsible for the immigration levels that had driven so many (and not
without reason if one witnesses the tensions in my home city of Sheffield) to
vote to quit the Bloc. To my mind the
inclusion of Central and Eastern European states in the EU on equal terms was a
fruit of victory in the Cold War, and was an opportunity that had to be seized.

Ultimately, I rejected
Brexit on ‘big picture’ geopolitical grounds. There are a range of very real
strategic dangers faced by Britain and its allies and partners from a
revanchist Russia, and a virulent Islamic State. My quintessential fear was
that Brexit would undermine the very cohesion upon which sound security and
defence must be established, weaken the EU’s important security role, and
damage NATO’s all-important collective defence role. My fears were not misplaced.

Lies, Damn Lies & Brexit!

For all my concerns I am at
the end of the day a democrat. A
decision was taken by the British people in a legitimate poll. Like many
Remainers I am now firm in my belief that Brexit must be realised at the minimum
cost to all concerned. Therefore, given
the dangers we Europeans collectively face those responsible for negotiating
the new post-Brexit political settlement (that will inevitably come) must stop
posturing, stop trying to turn the clock back, and stop wallowing in deceit and
half-truths, and get this whole damnable process over with quickly.

In other words, both
sides need to recognise their political responsibilities if the strategic
consequences of Brexit are not to be disastrous.

Wednesday, 6 September 2017

“There is a natural opposition among men to anything they have not
thought of themselves”.

Sir Barnes Wallis

Alphen,
Netherlands. 6 September. Last Thursday in Rotterdam I had the very distinct
honour for an Englishman of chairing the annual Johan de Witt conference on
future war in the maritime amphibious domain. Apparently Johan de Witt was some
Dutch bloke who was instrumental in the 1667 ‘nicking’ of the Royal Navy’s
flagship, the “Royal Charles”, from Chatham Naval Yard. Although I have long ascribed the aforesaid
Dutch ‘borrowing’ of the fleet flagship to a dose of chain rust, it was de Witt
who made the Medway Raid possible through reform of the Royal Netherlands Navy…and
innovation.

To start the
conference I had prepared a scenario script, which was brilliantly put together
into a film by my friends at Scenarios4Summits
in The Hague, with me doing the voice-over in a manner which, to my mind,
combined the very best of Burton and Olivier. The film portrayed the 2025 start
of a new European War in which an under-funded and under-equipped NATO force,
commanded by the British heavy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, was destroyed by a Russian force which forged
submarines, robotics, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) into a deadly
trinity.

My scenario
was inspired by the famous 1955 film, “The Dambusters”. The film portrays real-life
and brilliant innovation by engineering genius Sir Barnes Wallis, and brilliant
military execution by RAF 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, to destroy two of
Germany’s main dams in May 1943. To succeed six separate developments had to
come together; a new strategy (attacks of infrastructure vital to German
industrial infrastructure), a new technological idea (Barnes Wallis’s vision of
a bouncing bomb), a new bomb (the Upkeep mine), a new way of casting steel, a
new explosive (RDX), and a new aircraft (the Avro Lancaster bomber).

Today? Much is
being made of the possible civilian applications of AI for the common good.
However, like all technologies, it will also have military applications, and military
applications by less than wholesome regimes. NATO and its nations cannot afford
to be squeamish about this coming reality.

There are two
types of innovation; applied thinking that leads to new technologies and
applications, new thinking that corrals existing thinking and technologies into
new capabilities. A 2007 paper by John McCarthy
of Stanford University put AI and
the coming strategic reality into context when he wrote that, “Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to
achieve goals in the world”. AI is “….the
science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to
understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to
methods that are biologically observable”. It does not. A lot has happened over
the decade since McCarthy wrote that paper. Crucially, the pace of development
is accelerating to the extent that my fearsome vision for 2025 is entirely plausible.

The problem for
the Allies is that, in spite of the sterling efforts of Allied Command
Transformation (ACT), the words ‘NATO’ and ‘innovation’ are not ones that sit
together comfortably, either in a blog sentence or in reality. The challenge AI
and associated technologies and strategies (technology is now driving a lot of
strategy) poses to NATO is daunting. Use
of it, and defence against it will require deep innovation.

A close US
friend of mine last week put the scope of the challenge in its strategic context.
He said that the Alliance suffers from a mismatch between the nature of
conflict and war (the human component) and the character of conflict and war
(technological advances in the waging of war). In history it is the side that
creates an equilibrium between the two prevails in conflict and war. Too many
of the Allies simply do not want to even consider the very real possibility of
future war, and in so not-doing make such war more, not less likely.

NATO needs
access to a kind of defence Silicon Valley (Silicon Trench?). Specifically, the
Alliance should create a new NATO Defence Campus that brings together strategic
thinkers, technology thinkers and defence innovators to consider the shape of
legitimate deterrence and defence in the twenty-first century, how best to
maintain comparative advantage in twenty-first century warfare, and the impact
of such technologies on future war. The ‘Campus’, would operate in much the
same ways as similar Google and Microsoft institutions. It could also form part
of the evolving NATO-EU Strategic Partnership.
It could also be called the NATO Sir Barnes Wallis Campus, and,
naturally, I would be the first Rector!

If the Alliance
does not act then NATO faces a ‘Dreadnought’ moment, or worse, a new Pearl
Harbor. In December 1941 Japanese aircraft sank much of the US Pacific Fleet at
anchor by applying a series of deadly innovations they had copied from the successful
November 1940 attack by carrier-based (HMS
Illustrious) Royal Navy Swordfish, under the command of Lt. Cdr M.W.
Williamson RN, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

It is time
NATO woke up properly to future war! Even showing the Alliance is thinking in
such terms would be an act of deterrence. Why? Beijing, Moscow, and indeed
others, are not only thinking about how best to exploit the West’s many defence
vulnerabilities, they are actively seeking to engage in a war at our many seams
across the hybrid, cyber, hyper war spectrum. They are also pouring a lot of
money and research into realising such a capability.

The
Rambusters? My name for a new NATO force designed specifically to disrupt the
AI capabilities of adversaries before they are used to devastating effect
against the peoples and forces of the Alliance.

As for Johan
de Witt we English had our revenge. In
1688 we invited the Dutch William of Orange to become King William III of
England. It is a fate we English only impose on our worst enemies.

Tuesday, 29 August 2017

Republished in my blog by kind permission of the Canadian Global
Affairs Institute, which published this piece on 25 August, 2017 as part of the
NATO Series.

“Is your [Canadian] plan as cunning as a fox who’s just been
appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?” Blackadder, Blackadder
Goes Forth

The news that
by 2024 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canada will increase its defence
spending from a self-proclaimed brilliantly spent one per cent of GDP to a no
doubt equally brilliantly spent two per cent of GDP, and meet the 2014 Wales
Summit defence investment pledge (DIP!) is very good – at least on the face of
it. Canada is in many ways the country that makes the Alliance an alliance,
rather than America’s somewhat unconvincing European protectorate. But what should
Canada spend its new money on?

Earlier in
the year, I attended the NATO Resource Conference 2017 in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Three issues were central to the debate. First, the habit NATO Europeans have
acquired of relying on the U.S. Bank of Mom and Dad when they cannot be
bothered to spend enough on their own security and defence. Second, a profound
question was raised as to whether aforesaid NATO Europeans will ever really
honour the DIP, the now Holy Grail of contemporary alliance. Finally, upon what
should NATO and the Allies spend any additional monies? Canada?

The goodish
news first. Apparently, the decline in NATO defence spending stopped in 2015,
and even increased a bit (3.8 per cent or some $10 billion) in 2016. And if
NATO Europeans ever do honour the DIP – the biggest “if” since “if” was
introduced into the English language by King Ethelred the Literately Uncertain
– NATO would suddenly have an additional $100 billion to spend.

And yet, read
between European lines and the message was (as ever) clear as mud: hurry up and
wait! Yes, it was repeated ad nauseam that all NATO Europeans are “fully”
committed to spending two per cent of GDP on defence. However, the “but” in the
room was positively thermonuclear. In fact, most Europeans are still driven by
the assumption that sooner or later the U.S. Bank of Mom and Dad will come out
late on a dark, stormy night to pick up their wayward relatives, who not only
forgot to save the bus fare home, but also got hammered on a toxic brew called
“Welfare”, ended up in a heap in the middle of strategic nowhere, and missed
the last bus.

The trouble
is that Mom and Dad might not always be there. First, there is growing
irritation in some parts of the U.S. administration about Euro-Junior’s refusal
to get off its fat ass and get a job. Second, Mom and Dad are not as flush as
they used to be. Third, Mom and Dad now have to deal with a noisy and bolshie
Chinese neighbour at the other end of the street. Fourth, Mom and Dad are
simply too tired and too busy.

NATO itself
is also deeply divided. One group – for sake of argument, the easterners –
wants the additional monies others are going to spend to be spent on high-end,
expensive, big-bang stuff that defends them. The hope is that such increased
expenditure will render the NATO defence and deterrence posture credible not
just in the eyes of the brigade of budgeteers who control everything, but also
Russia. Another group – for sake of argument, the southerners – thinks this is
nonsense, and wants the bulk of the additional monies others will spend on
defending them to be spent on counter-terrorism and counter-criminal
activities, most notably human trafficking. Very few want NATO to have the
money and most would prefer to spend it on themselves.

Here’s the
problem: if NATO is to remain the West’s ultimate security and defence
insurance, then henceforth NATO must be able both to deter and defend at the
high end of conflict. It must prepare to fight and if needs be win a war,
playing a full role in protecting its home base from penetration and attack by
terrorists and globally-capable criminals. In other words, all of us are going
to have to buy into all of the above if the Alliance is to be credible in the
face of threats.

Which brings
me back to the DIP and Canada. Yes, I am the first to say that two per cent of
GDP spent on defence is better than one per cent, however brilliantly that one
per cent is spent. What concerns me is the growing obsession among all the
non-American NATO members with measuring inputs as a way to avoid looking
seriously at desired and necessarily expensive outcomes, which at the end of
the day is what security and defence must be about. Worse, I am not at all sure
any NATO nation knows what it is really spending its defence budget on these
days, let alone how it can get from, say, one per cent of GDP to two per cent
of GDP. Other, that is, than by fiddling the books. Britain, are you listening?

The two per
cent target forces Ottawa to face a profound set of strategic choices it has
long been fudging. This is not least over that most fundamental of Canadian
defence posers: should Ottawa invest the planned new funds in NATO or the
Americans, and what mix of the two? It is a question that can no longer be
dodged. For the first time in decades Canada lives in strategically relevant
neighbourhoods in which others have a profound interest – and not always
friendly “others”.

The Russian
Northern Fleet is again contesting the North Atlantic. The Royal Canadian Navy
and Royal Canadian Air Force will have critical roles to play therein. However,
given the United States Navy’s focus on Asia-Pacific, much of that effort might
have to be with the Royal Navy, albeit embedded in the NATO Command Structure.
History beckons, eh? The High North and the Arctic Circle are also fast
becoming contested. The Arctic is in the Euro-Atlantic area and thus formally a
NATO responsibility. However, in addition to the Americans, it is likely that
Canada will not only find itself more engaged with NATO ally Norway, and to
some extent the U.K., but also non-NATO partners such as Finland and Sweden.

Canada is
also a Pacific power. Given the emerging threat posed by the likes of North
Korea to continental North America, as well as the coming advent of new war
technologies, the defence of Canada and its neighbour is likely to call for a
much reinforced, more agile and more advanced NORAD. And, the need for Canadian
influence over its American neighbour to the south is, of course, a central
plank of Ottawa’s grand strategy (do you Canadians do “grand strategy”, or is
that too American?). One has only to look at the size and location of the
Canadian embassy in D.C. to understand that.

So, where
should the focus be of Ottawa’s balance of defence investments? Given evolving
Canadian security and defence interests, it is again vital that Ottawa exerts
influence over the Americans and the Alliance. Ottawa needs to understand this
truism of Canadian strategy. There is some evidence that Ottawa does indeed get
this, which is why Canada sent a battle group to Latvia as part of NATO’s
Enhanced Forward Presence to deter an aggressive Russia. Equally, Canada’s
skills in stabilization and reconstruction are also recognized the world over,
as is Canada’s mastery of soft power, and all that goes with it. These skills
must not be lost.

However, if
Canada really wants to influence the Americans – Donald Trump or no – Ottawa
must avoid falling into the European trap by claiming to spend two per cent of
GDP on defence, when it is not. The use of soft power dressed up as hard power
is a trick some Germans and other Europeans are trying to pull at the moment.
The aim is to achieve the two per cent DIP target, but only by political
sleight-of-hand. Nor should Canada follow the British down the road of creative
defence accounting by which everything that might have even the most tenuous
link to defence is included in the defence estimate. Britain is fast abandoning
sound defence in pursuit of sound money and losing a lot of influence over both
– large, empty aircraft carriers or no.

You see, at
the end of the day, the two per cent DIP is meant to be spent on hard defence,
of which 20 per cent each year must be spent on new hard defence kit, because
that is what sound strategy demands right now. And what is really cunning about
the increase in defence expenditure implied by the DIP is that it is not only
about enhanced or strengthened defence. It is about the use of cutting edge
military capabilities to strengthen the role an ally might play in the
coalitions that will be the strategic method of the 21st century, in order also
to strengthen the strategic and political influence a state has over the
structure and conduct of such coalitions. Given Canada’s new strategic reality,
Ottawa has no choice but to ensure it can indeed exert such influence over the
Americans and the Europeans. Well, no, I am wrong. Ottawa could instead choose
to retreat into defence pretence, like so many of its allies, and see what
happens.

Until
political leaders in NATO capitals, including Canada, stop sacrificing sound
long-term strategy for the sake of facile short-term politics and continue to
hide hard defence truths, then I fear the artifice of input will continue to
exercise tyranny over the strategy of outcomes.

Cunning, eh? Canada, you had
better spend on a hard two per cent, and mean it!

Thursday, 24 August 2017

"If the British Government would only play the grand game — help
Russia cordially to all that she has a right to expect — shake hands with
Persia — get her all possible amends from Oosbegs — force the Bokhara Amir to
be just to us, the Afghans, and other Oosbeg states, and his own kingdom…The
expediency, nay the necessity of them will be seen, and we shall play the noble
part that the first Christian nation of the world ought to fill."

Arthur Conolly, 1840

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 August. The Great Game was the nineteenth
century struggle between Britain and Russia for India, with much of the
conflict over all-important control of Afghanistan. It was British diplomat
Arthur Conolly who in 1840 coined the phrase Great Game. This week President
Trump committed the US to the latest iteration of it, the latest twist in
America’s now sixteen year Afghan War, its longest. The President also said, “We
are going to win”. He would be the first. No outside power has ever won the
Great Game in Afghanistan. And, the US will have little chance of ‘winning’ it
without a counter-terrorism, governance and regional strategy reinforced by
strategic patience. What can President Trump hope to achieve?

In his address to the American nation on Monday the President clearly indicated
the continuing need for multifaceted strategy which came out of last week’s
meeting with his senior generals at Camp David. The main effort at present is
to reinforce the Kabul government of President Ashraf Ghani by focusing on the capacity-building
of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). An extra 3,800 troops will be sent back to
Afghanistan to reinforce the 8,400 troops already in theatre to bolster
counter-terrorism operations and reinforce ANSF training. This ‘new approach’ has the fingerprints of
Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster
all over it.

The Administration is correct to be concerned. Since the withdrawal of US forces from
Afghanistan at the end of 2015 the Taliban have extended their traditional
reach beyond the Pashtun heartlands on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border, into Uzbek and Tadjik areas. Worse, according to London Al Qaeda (AQ) are
also showing signs of once again exploiting a lack of governance to re-establish
safe havens, and ISIS is also now present on the ground.

Critically, the Administration seems to want to establish a proper joined-up
regional strategy, without which there can be no stability in Afghanistan, and may
just work this time. The threat posed by Al Qaeda and ISIS is one of those
strange conjunctions in geopolitics that could unite all the contending Great
Powers and regional-strategic powers that surround Afghanistan. Shia Iran hates
ISIS, and it is in the interests of China, Russia, and India, all three of
which are very active in Afghanistan – both overtly and covertly – to block the
return of AQ to Afghanistan, and most certainly ISIS.

The challenge, and the key to the strategy having any success, is
Pakistan. Or, to be more precise, the need to separate the Indian-Pakistan
regional-strategic conflict from the path to something like stability in
Afghanistan. Some years ago the late, great Ron Asmus and I were briefed by Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) at the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. Naturally,
we were given the Pakistani regional view. It was a view all about the strategic
threat posed to Islamabad by Indian activities in southern Afghanistan, Pakistan’s
fear of being caught in a strategic sandwich between Afghanistan and India, and
the consequent need for Pakistan to maintain ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan.

Of course, if the strategy is to have any chance
of succeeding the ‘Talib’ will need to brought to some form of accommodation
with Kabul government. To that end, the US is also offering ‘unconditional’
peace talks with the Taliban in an effort to get them to abandon AQ and ISIS.
However, the Taliban will not feel at all obliged to talk until their two main shuras (councils), based in Pakistan’s
Peshawar and Quetta respectively, are forced to treat terms. In other words, Islamabad will need to be
either convinced or coerced to help exert such pressure.

The American plan, as it stands, represents a limited US reengagement in
Afghanistan. Washington is certainly
right to reinject political energy and capital into a struggle that is central
to the World-wider challenge posed by Islamism.
Sending 4000 or so extra troops that boost the counter-terror and ANSF
training missions will indeed be useful. However, the most that can be said for
the strategy is that it is a blocking/holding/reinforcing move. As the British,
Russians, and indeed the US and its NATO allies have discovered, what matters
in Afghanistan and the surrounding region is not force levels, important though
they can be, but sustained good strategy over time and distance.

In November 1841 Conolly was captured in Afghanistan on a
rescue mission to free a fellow British officer. The two were executed by the
Emir of Bukhara on 24 June 1842 on charges of spying for the British Empire. That
same year some 16,500 British soldiers and civilians were massacred at a mountain
pass, the Khurd Kabul. As Rudyard
Kipling once wrote, “And the end
of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the
epitaph drear: A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East”.

Tuesday, 22 August 2017

“Fear
not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;Talkers are no good doers: be assured,we come to use our hands and not our tongues.”

Richard III, William Shakespeare

Alphen, Netherlands. August 22. On this day in 1485 King
Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field and
lost his crown and his life. It seems
somewhat fitting to write this as President Trump announces a re-commitment to
Afghanistan (more on that later in the week) and in London soon-to-emerge
Cabinet Office “review of capability” report will confirm a hole in the UK
defence budget of anything between £10 billion and £30 billion. The British
government will then demand the hole is filled from within the existing defence
budget, which will in turn mean the abandonment of Strategic Defence and
Security Review 2015, more cuts to an already lamentably small British force for
a top five or six world economic power), and no doubt back to the ‘more with
less’ nonsense which came close to breaking the British military. Things are a little different at the other
end of Europe. Contrast Britain’s retreat from sound defence with Russia’s
forthcoming Zapad (West) 2017 exercise
in Belarus.

The official theme of Zapad 2017 is the “use of forces in the interests of ensuring the military security of the Union State”. Between 14 and 20 September, 2017 Russia, and its junior
partner Belarus, (the so-called ‘Union State’) will conduct the largest
military exercise in Europe since the Cold War. The exercise will take place
close to the Belarussian border with Poland at Brest, as well as some 60
kilometres across NATO territory in Kaliningrad, the small Russian enclave and
former German Konigsberg and Old Prussia. For Russians the location of the exercise is,
indeed, dripping with historical significance. The heroic June 1941 defence of Brest fortress
by Soviet forces against Hitler’s Wehrmacht has become a symbol of Russian
resistance against ‘fascist’ Western aggression.

Russia and Belarus have formally said that Zapad 2017 will only involve the
exercising of some 19,000 troops in the Western Military District, one of the
Russian Federation’s four strategic operational commands. This is below the force
level that requires formal notification of the exercise under the so-called Vienna
Document to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
However, NATO and other analysts believe that Zapad 2017 will instead incorporate a massive series of wargames
involving between 60,000 and 100,000 military and civilian personnel.
Crucially, the exercise will also test Russian military and civilian readiness
and effectiveness across a conflict spectrum that stretches from hybrid warfare
to hyper warfare via cyber warfare, backed up by the threat of nuclear force
and strengthening anti-air, area defence (A2/AD) capabilities – the new linear/non-linear
order of twenty-first century strategic battle pioneered by the Russian Chief
of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Valery Vasileyvich Gerasimov.

To be fair Minsk, and belatedly Moscow, are showing signs of
some willingness to be transparent.
Interestingly, it is Belarus that took the lead in this effort, suggesting
the Union State is not quite the union Moscow would like to portray. In July,
Minsk unilaterally invited arms inspectors and the defence attachés of NATO and
non-NATO countries to attend as observers.
Last week, on August 15, Moscow issued its own separate set of
invitations.

Evidence would also suggest that all is not well with
Russia’s military reforms, and in particular the state of morale amongst
Russia’s elite formations in the Oblast.
Several strike formations which were designed to be twenty-first century
‘shock armies’ manned by professional soldiers have been forced to undertake a
form of muscular insurgency role in Ukraine.
Pay has not been what was promised, and conditions for the troops are
reported to be worse in some instances to those traditionally suffered by Russian
conscripts. The training of key formations, such as the 1st Guards Tank Army, has also been stalled by the
Ukraine imbroglio.

Still, Russia continues to play a now familiar game of strategic maskirovka (deception) over Zapad 2017. Moscow suggests that any criticism from the
West of such a gargantuan exercise is in fact an attempt to return Europe back
to the Cold War. Simply holding Zapad
2017 so close to the borders of EU members and NATO allies is an
intemperate and irresponsible act of intimidation. NATO holds no exercises on
anything like such a scale, and with nothing like the potential for offensive
action. Sadly, Zapad 2017 fits into a
well-established Russian penchant for sudden ‘snap’ exercises, big exercises,
and snap, big exercises all of which are designed the keep the European democracies
strategically, politically, and militarily off-balance.

NATO is worried by Zapad 2017. The problem for NATO and the
West is that in the past Russia has used large-scale exercises as a prelude to
war. Now, I am not suggesting for a
moment that Russia is about to start another war in Europe, beyond the war it
has already started in Ukraine. However, it is the nature of defence planning,
or at least it should be (clearly not in London), that the worst-case must be
assumed if there is no dialogue to the contrary, and that such scenarios must
form the basis for sound defence planning.

Therefore, if Russia really wants to avoid creating the
impression of a Europe sliding back towards a new cold war then all Russia has
to do is desist with very large, expensive and dangerous exercises such as Zapad 2017. Oh, and stop no-notice snap exercises and
other forms of intimidation, such as buzzing Allied ships in international
waters, violating the well-established borders of Allied states, and seeking to
destabilise said states with fake news and cyber-attacks. As the Russian meerkats
say in a well-known British TV commercial for insurance products, “Simples!”

Still, I am not going to hold my breath any longer in the
hope that the Putin regime does the common sense thing and seeks
mutually-enriching friendship with its fellow Europeans. At the end of
Shakespeare’s Richard III the
defeated king cries out, “Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, And I will
stand the hazard of the die: I think there will be six Richmonds in the field,
Five I have slain to-day instead of him. A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a
horse”.

As Russia postures and intimidates I wonder how many ‘horses’
Britain is about to cut? Not so ‘simples’.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Vice-President, Atlantic Treaty Association, Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.